Joern Hendrich Block

Universität Trier · Department of Business Administration

An entrepreneur’s digital identity matters for resource acquisition and venture development. However, we know little about the factors that influence or change entrepreneurs’ digital identities. This study explores how entrepreneurs’ digital identities change after a venture capital (VC) funding round. Applying a language-based text analysis to a l...

Plain English Summary Entrepreneurship research questions the core assumptions of other academic fields and legitimizes them both practically and academically. Since the 1980s, entrepreneurship research has seen tremendous growth and development, establishing itself as an academic field. Entrepreneurship is also taught extensively in leading busine...

The education of future entrepreneurs shapes how we will live in the future, and proper entrepreneurship education is thus of utmost importance. Entrepreneurship educators and researchers constantly renew tools, interventions, and training programs for entrepreneurship education and adapt them to the specific needs of entrepreneurs and developments...

The education of future entrepreneurs shapes how we will live in the future. Entrepreneurship education is thus of utmost importance. This paper formulates several propositions and critical insights that we deem especially important for the current state of entrepreneurship education and its future development. These propositions concern the goals...

The EIF VC Survey and the EIF Private Equity Mid-Market Survey (the largest combined regular survey exercises among General Partners on a pan-European level) provide an opportunity to retrieve unique market insights. This EIF Working Paper is based on the results of the 2022 waves of these two surveys and examines how the Russian offensive war agai...

In response to strong revenue and income losses facing a large share of self-employed individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic, the German federal government introduced a €50bn emergency-aid program. Based on real-time online-survey data comprising more than 20,000 observations, we analyze the impact of this program on the confidence to survive the...

Plain English Summary Family firms are the most common firm type around the world. Many of them, also those in later family generations, are run by members of the business-owning family. This is surprising since prior research has identified strong reasons that speak against family management such as nepotism, altruism, lower managerial skills, and...

Research and public interest on economic inequality have grown over the last years. Family firms and the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few wealthy entrepreneurial families have been discussed as both a cause and a consequence of economic inequality. Yet, so far, we lack knowledge about the relationship between economic inequal...

The EIF Venture Capital (VC) Survey, the EIF Private Equity Mid-Market (PE MM) Survey, and the EIF Business Angels (BA) Survey (the largest combined regular survey exercises among General Partners and Business Angels on a pan-European level) provide an opportunity to retrieve unique market insights. This publication is based on the results of the 2...

Research shows that stress at work can affect the health of individuals. In particular, working time quality (the extent and flexibility of the working time) has been found to be an important antecedent of stress at work. Prior entrepreneurship research further shows that not only job demands and control but also working time quality differ between...

Schumpeterian entrepreneurs are considered agents of innovation and technology transfer. However, to fulfill this role, they need entrepreneurial finance. From the perspective of digital identity, we examine the relationship between a Schumpeterian digital identity and venture capital (VC) funding. Because the VC industry celebrates innovative and...

The literature base of business and management research is constantly growing and becoming more complex. Hence, the need for an evidence-focused review journal such as Management Review Quarterly (MRQ) is also growing. Literature reviews, meta-analyses, replications, and bibliographic studies help to consolidate and integrate the field's evidence a...

Meta-analytic structural equation modeling (MASEM) has become a widespread approach to meta-analyze the evidence in a field and to test a (theoretical) multivari-ate model based on aggregated data. This editorial presents new tricks of the trade and discusses current issues surrounding MASEM that in our view are either insufficiently recognized in...

Prior research has analyzed how different ownership types affect firm growth. Yet, so far, we know little about the effect of foundation ownership on firm growth. This is an important research gap as some of the largest firms in Western and Northern Europe are either fully or partly owned by foundations. Our study addresses this gap and analyzes th...

The EIF VC Survey, the EIF Private Equity Mid-Market Survey, and the EIF Business Angels Survey (the largest combined regular survey exercises among General Partners and Business Angels on a pan-European level) provide an opportunity to retrieve unique market insights. This publication is based on the results of the 2022 VC Survey, conducted by the...

Despite its large and increasing size in the U.S. and Europe, there is relatively little research on the private debt (PD) market, particularly compared to the bank and syndicated loan markets. Accordingly, in this paper, we survey U.S. and European investors with private debt assets under management (AuM) of over $300 billion. These investors are...

The Covid-19 pandemic as a truly global crisis has shown the importance of firm resilience in times of crisis. Yet, so far, we lack an understanding of the role of firm ownership and management in building this resilience. Based on stewardship theory, we posit that family management and ownership help firms to navigate through a global crisis. To t...

We study the case of Vietnam to assess the long-lasting role of institutional and historical legacy on entrepreneurial outcomes. In particular, we investigate the detrimental effect of socialist institutions on entrepreneurship. Vietnam offers a unique quasi-experimental setting because the country was divided into the socialist North and the nonso...

Trademarks differ in breadth and can cover a wide range of categories of goods and services. We draw on real options theory and argue that greater trademark breadth constitutes a valuable real option that is associated with higher firm valuation and performance. We analyze a sample of 1510 firms that went public in Europe between 2002 and 2015 and...

The self-employed faced strong income losses during the Covid-19 pandemic. Many governments introduced programs to financially support the self-employed during the pandemic, including Germany. The German Ministry for Economic Affairs announced a €50bn emergency-aid program in March 2020, offering one-off lump-sum payments of up to €15,000 to those...

Prior research shows that trademarks positively relate to startups' growth and survival. However, empirical evidence on the impact of intellectual property rights (IPRs), especially trademarks, on the development of social startups' hybrid outcomes is limited. Our study aims to fill this gap by investigating how early trademarking relates to the su...

Given that skill variety is widely regarded a key component of entrepreneurial human capital, gender differences in entrepreneurship could be rooted in the formation of such skill variety. Analyzing 12-year longitudinal data following 1,321 Finnish adolescents into adulthood, we study whether gender differences in skill variety open up early in the...

Replication studies are important for the empirical research process. Yet, while there is an increased awareness of the need for replication in management research, it appears that such studies are rarely published in leading management journals. Importantly, we lack a comprehensive overview of replication studies in the top management journals tha...

Patents are temporary exclusive rights granted by the government for inventions in exchange for public disclosure. They are considered a proxy for technological innovation and are used in many disciplines ranging from economics and management to regional science. Yet, research on family firm innovation has only recently started to use patent data....

Auf Basis einer Befragung des Wittener Instituts für Familienunternehmen (WIFU) und des Forschungszentrums Mittelstand (FZM) der Universität Trier untersucht die vorliegende Studie die digitale Transformation des deutschen Mittelstands, mit besonderem Fokus auf Familienunternehmen. Die Datengrundlage bilden 525 Unternehmen, 444 davon sind Familienu...

Perceptual factors explain a large part of the gender gap in entrepreneurial propensity. The study by Koellinger et al. (2013) is an influential study in this literature stream. We replicate this study with more recent data and broader country coverage. Our findings show that gender differences in entrepreneurial propensity still exist (although th...

Entrepreneurship as a phenomenon has changed a lot over the last years. At the same time entrepreneurship as an interdisciplinary research field has seen strong growth and gained importance in management as a discipline. The special issue “Structured Literature Reviews in Entrepreneurship Research-Taking Stock and Setting the Agenda” takes stock of...

Prior research examining the consequences of crises for small businesses and entrepreneurial ventures has typically applied a macro-perspective, focussing on the impact of crises on business organisations and the strategies they adopt in times of crisis. In this editorial, we review the articles that form part of our special issue on ‘Small Busines...

The role of family firms in innovation and the question of whether family firms show differences in innovation investments and outcomes are intensely debated. To address these issues, Duran, Kammerlander, van Essen, and Zellweger (2016) published a meta-analytic structural equation model (MASEM) showing that family firms produce more innovation out...

Equity crowdfunding platforms provide investors the opportunity to engage with entrepreneurs and each other through online discussion boards. However, little is known about the effects of such discussion boards on crowdfunding dynamics. Based on the analysis of 264 campaigns comprising 5,916 funding day observations, we use the instrumental variabl...

Bootstrap financing refers to measures that entrepreneurial ventures undertake to preserve liquidity (e.g., reducing expenses, collecting receivables, delaying payments, preselling). Prior research shows that bootstrap financing is an important enabler for the growth of resource-constrained early-stage ventures. However, little is known about the u...

Das Thema Unternehmensnachfolge ist von hoher volkswirtschaftlicher Bedeutung. Auf dem Markt für Unternehmensnachfolgen herrscht jedoch Intransparenz und nur wenige quantitativ-empirische Untersuchungen existieren. Dieser Beitrag befasst sich mit dem Verkaufs- und Kaufgeschehen von KMU im Rahmen der Unternehmensnachfolge in Deutschland. Er liefert...

We assess whether and how VC investors’ education and experience influence their screening decisions of potential investee candidates. Empirically, we perform an experimental choice-based-conjoint (CBC) analysis with 564 individual VC investors. Our results highlight that the level and field of education, as well as the decision maker’s investment...

Based on legitimacy and consumer inference theory, we examine when, how, and why past crowdfunding success influences the perceptions and behaviors of consumers. Across five studies (four controlled experiments and one field experiment), our findings demonstrate that a young venture’s past crowdfunding success enhances consumers’ perceptions of its...

The path to academic entrepreneurship is characterized by a sequence of venture creation activities, which can be classified into operational-, financing- and commercialization activities. Academic entrepreneurship research is concerned with the question how different motives of scientists affect the patterns of these venture creation activities. U...

Social impact incubators (SIIs) are a new type of incubator that support social enterprises (SEs) in their early business stages to foster and develop their hybrid objectives. However, research on SIIs is still scarce, and little is known about SIIs’ motives, supporting activities, and selection criteria. In investigating 71 SII decision makers, we...

Hidden champions are market leaders in niche markets and are an important part of the German Mittelstand. Although the hidden champion phenomenon has received considerable interest in practice, few academic studies on this issue exist. We especially lack evidence on the financial performance of hidden champions. Our study addresses this gap and inv...

Hidden Champions (HCs) are defined as market leaders in niche markets. They represent the success of the German Mittelstand like no other group of firms. However, little is known on how HCs contribute to regional development. Given their export strength, regional embeddedness, and strong vertical integration we expect HCs to have a profound effect...

Entrepreneurial finance markets are in a dynamic state. New market niches and players have developed and continue to emerge. The rules of the game and the methods for receiving financial backing have changed in many ways. This editorial and the special issue of Small Business Economics focus on crowdfunding (CF) and initial coin offerings (ICOs), w...

Hidden Champions stehen als Marktführer in Nischenmärkten für den erfolgreichen deutschen Mittelstand wie kaum ein anderer Unternehmenstyp. Viele, aber nicht alle Hidden Champions sind im Eigentum von Unternehmerfamilien. In diesem Beitrag untersuchen wir, inwieweit Unternehmerfamilien der ideale Eigentümertyp für Hidden Champions sind. Das Ergebni...

Decision-making research in venture capital (VC) tends to study investors solely in particular countries or regions and lacks studies that directly compare the importance of screening criteria from different regions. We use a multimethod approach to investigate differences in the importance attributed to several screening criteria between United St...

Systematic literature review articles are important for synthesizing knowledge in management and business research. However, to date, we lack clear guidelines how to review such articles. This editorial takes the perspective of the reviewer. It presents ten key questions and criteria that reviewers should ask when reviewing systematic literature re...

Globalization, digital technologies, societal and environmental concerns influence the way family firms operate locally and internationally. Family firms are often torn between their local and global environments, simultaneously visible and embedded in their local environment while marketing their products and services abroad. Unlike large multinat...

Regional science has long been concerned with measuring the spatial distribution of innovation activity. We introduce trademarks as a new indicator for regional innovation and argue that they are particularly useful to measure the 'soft' side of innovation that is difficult to capture with conventional indicators. We explore the spatial distributio...

Cross-country research finds mixed performance effects of family involvement in management (FIM) but consistently positive performance effects of family involvement in ownership (FIO). We argue that cross-country differences in institutional trust and trust in family can help explain this discrepancy. We reason that trust in family normalizes famil...

Businesses run by romantic couples—couple businesses—are an important social and economic phenomenon. These businesses are widespread and represent a distinct form of business; they can be large corporations or home-based businesses, they can make large or small revenues, and the couples running them can have high or low levels of education. Schola...

Prevailing research on individuals’ compliance with public health related behaviours during the COVID-19 pandemic tends to study composite measures of multiple types of behaviours, without distinguishing between different types of behaviours. However, measures taken by governments involve adjustments concerning a range of different daily behaviours...

We apply a vector autoregression (VAR) model to investigate the market cycles of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) as well as their relationships with bitcoin and ether. Our sample covers 104 weekly observations between January 2017 and December 2018. Our results show that ICO market cycles exist and that shocks to the growth rates of ICO volumes are p...

Impact investors pursue both financial and social goals and have become an important source of funding for social enterprises. Our study assesses impact investor criteria when screening social enterprises. Applying an experimental conjoint analysis to a sample of 179 impact investors, we find that the three most important criteria are the authentic...

Research Question/Issue In this study, we examine the impact of family firm status on publicly listed firms’ leverage ratios. Furthermore, we investigate the moderating role of a country's institutional setting, especially its shareholder and creditor rights, on this relationship. Research Findings/Insights Conducting a meta‐analysis on 869 effect...

In Stiftungsunternehmen gibt es eine Vielzahl von Organen mit jeweils verschiedenen Funktionen und Aufgaben. Zu unterscheiden sind hier Unternehmens-, Stiftungs- und Familienorgane. Des Weiteren lässt sich nach ausführenden und kontrollierenden sowie gesetzlich vorgeschriebenen und freiwilligen Organen unterscheiden. Dieses Kapitel stellt die Rahme...

Die Hidden Champions verzeichnen in vielen Branchen beachtliche Erfolge und werden regelmäßig als das Rückgrat der deutschen Wirtschaft beschrieben. Einige von ihnen sind an der Börse notiert. Doch inwiefern verträgt sich die Strategie der Hidden Champions mit den Gesetzmäßigkeiten der Kapitalmärkte? Der Vergleich ausgewählter Kennzahlen börsennoti...

Im Jahr 2015 überführte Dr.-Ing. E. h. Martin Herrenknecht seine Unternehmensanteile in eine Familienstiftung. In dem von Prof. Dr. Jörn Block mit ihm und seinem Sohn Martin-Devid Herrenknecht geführten Interview begründet er diesen Schritt insbesondere mit dem Ziel der Sicherung des langfristigen Fortbestands des Familienunternehmens und der verbu...

Bereits im Jahre 1987 hat Reinhold Würth das Firmenvermögen seines unternehmerischen Lebenswerks in eine Stiftungsstruktur, bestehend aus mehreren Familienstiftungen, eingebracht. Aus dem von Prof. Dr. Jörn Block mit Prof. Dr. h. c. mult. Würth geführten Interview geht hervor, dass die Familienstiftung als Option der Nachfolgeregelung insbesondere...

Business planning is one of the most studied topics in management, capturing the interest of researchers focused on new ventures, small enterprises, and large companies alike. However, little research exists that examines the cognitive antecedents of early planning. Analyzing a unique data set that was obtained from 2,535 individuals residing in th...

Affecting regulation is difficult for any firm, but it requires strenuous efforts for those operating in emerging industries. In this study, we seek to understand the complex process through which equity crowdfunding has become adopted in four Commonwealth countries following the passage of equity crowdfunding regulations in the US. We use extensiv...

Zusammenfassung Dieser Beitrag befasst sich mit der Unterstützungslandschaft für Social Entrepreneurship (SE) im DACH-Raum und liefert Antworten auf die Fragen, welche Organisationen SE im DACH-Raum fördern, wie und warum diese Organisationen SE fördern und welche Typen von Sozialunternehmen gefördert werden. Zur Beantwortung dieser Forschungsfrage...

Some of the largest listed firms in Western and Northern Europe are partly owned by foundations. So far, little research exists about the shareholder value effects of foundation ownership. This study aims to close this gap using an event study method. We find that equity markets show a positive reaction following the announcement by a foundation th...

This study replicates and extends the meta-analyses on family firm performance by O’Boyle et al. (2012). Based on the empirical findings of 1095 primary studies from 61 countries, we find an economically small but statistically significant positive impact of family influence on firms’ financial performance. This outperformance occurs particularly f...

Business takeovers and new venture start-ups are two important and distinct entry modes of entrepreneurship. They differ from resource-based and organizational ecology perspectives. We compare firm survival patterns and determinants associated with the two entry modes. From two large French datasets, we find that business takeovers have a higher su...

Bootstrap financing refers to measures that entrepreneurial ventures undertake to preserve liquidity (e.g., reducing expenses, collecting receivables, delaying payments, preselling). Prior research shows that bootstrap financing is an important enabler for the growth of resource-constrained early-stage ventures. However, little is known about the u...

We assess whether and how entrepreneurs' digital identities change in response to entrepreneurial failure based on a sample of 760 entrepreneurs who experienced failure. We analyze a longitudinal dataset of Twitter messages before, during, and after a business failure with a language-based method of computerized text analysis. The results of our ex...